Positional effects in a monostratal grammar of German

This study examines the notion of syntactic position as it is manifested in German. Transformational approaches standardly rely on configurational not ions such as specifier or head for positional effects. A closer investigati on of German subordinate structures finds the standard positional dichotomy between heads and specifiers wanting. At the same time, the distributional facts strongly argue for an explicit recognition of the notion of syntacti c position, albeit one that is not based on tree-configurational notions, b ut instead in terms of linearly defined classes of distribution among const ituents within the clause. Finally it is argued that this approach provides the basis for characterizing clause types which naturally generalizes over different immediate dominance relations.